The GAMA trade show is an annual get-together for games manufacturers, distributors and retailers. It all happens in Las Vegas, and just as in previous years Cubicle 7 was in attendance - this year, however, we were co-sponsors for the first time!

Being based in the UK Las Vegas is a long way for us to travel but we find GAMA to be well worth the trip. It's a chance for us to meet face to face with our fellow publishers, distributors and retailers.

Our busy production schedule, and the way the hobby games industry is set up, means we don't always get a chance to communicate as much as we would like with our partners and contemporaries. The GAMA trade show offers precisely that chance, in a dedicated space.

It's not an event we've spoken much about before here on the Cubicle 7 website, but this year we decided to change that with our report about what we got up to at this year's GAMA trade show. What happened in Vegas isn't staying in Vegas!

GAMA is the Game Manufacturer’s Association, of which we are proud members. We've mentioned that the GAMA trade show isn't quite like most of the conventions we attend as C7. But something it has in common is that we do have a stand. Here's a before and after picture of our stand, featuring the Tower of Power™.
The trade hall at GAMA is open for two afternoons, and it's a chance for retailers to meet all the manufacturers and distributors that offer games and services. We saw hundreds of our US-based retailers, getting the chance to talk one-on-one and share some of our exciting plans for the coming year, as well as fill them in on games we have already published.

As well as the more informal meetings we had in the trade hall, as co-sponsors of the show this year we delivered 2 seminars as well as a lunchtime address. It was a thrill to see our posters around the venue (Bally's, Las Vegas) and our ad in the programme.

Our seminars were well attended, and really couldn't have gone any better. We were able to introduce a wide number of retailers to our plans for 2015/16 in detail, as well as giving the low down on our range of games.

A great many retailers currently stock Doctor Who: The Card Game, which has been our real break-out hit. This isn't widely known amongst C7 fans, but our first card game is our best selling game by a very wide margin, and was reprinted twice in it's first edition, while the second edition is being reprinted right now to keep up with demand. It's stocked far more widely than any of our other games and has done really rather well. We're very proud of it.

Now that so many retailers have seen the quality of that game they're keen to see more. We gave short presentations on our plans for our expanding range of Doctor Who games, The One Ring, Lone Wolf and Cthulhu Britannica London. We had to choose carefully what to speak about in our limited time slots, so we could only give the briefest of run downs on our other games – though we certainly spoke more about those at our stall in the trade hall.

So what did we have to say about each of our main lines?

Doctor Who Doctor Who: Adventures In Time And Space is regenerating as the Doctor Who Roleplaying Game with the Twelfth Doctor Edition as a single volume hardcover. We spoke about the future of the card game (more on that here soon), and showed off some imagery of our exciting new dice game Dalek Dice. Dalek Dice caused a lot of excitement – it's Doctor Who; it has great designer pedigree, Francesco Nepitello and Marco Maggi (War of the Ring, The One Ring, Battle of Five Armies); it's published by Cubicle 7; and it'll have a great price.

The One Ring
The key point here was the success of the revised edition, and how The One Ring line has really matured, passing the tipping point where it's considered well supported, and with a whole stack of hit supplements.

Our upcoming releases are Ruins of the North, which is off the presses and heading to stores, Horse-lords of Rohan, The Adventurer's Companion, and Journeys & Maps. We shared the covers to these with retailers, giving them an exclusive first look, and permission to take some photos for their sites and blogs. Keep an eye out for those around the web.

Lone WolfThe Lone Wolf Adventure Game is our introductory roleplaying game. Its aim is not just to introduce existing RPGers a simplified version of a particular system, but to teach completely new players how to play a roleplaying game right out of the box. A new group of players handed the box should be able to open it and be playing within minutes. It doesn’t need an experienced gamer to show anyone how it works, and you don’t need to read the whole thing before you get to playing. We hope this will make it extremely accessible, and the go-to game for creating new gamers.

We explained how we’ve used the great support from Kickstarter to make something at a very attractive price, which we just wouldn’t have been able to do otherwise.

Cthulhu Britannica London
The deluxe boxed set is at print now, and the range of extras is ever expanding. So alongside the core box, which contains three books, posters and handouts we also have on the way:

•The Curse of Nineveh, a 224-page campaign penned by some of the leading lights in Call of Cthulhu writing.
•Two hardcover journals that standalone as intriguing works of Call of Cthulhu fiction, as well as being deluxe hand outs for the campaign.
•Cards from the Smoke offers a method of generating plots and chases in the midst of a game of Call of Cthulhu.
•A cross over book for World War Cthulhu detailing the home front in the capital of the UK during World War Two.

Our CEO Dominic McDowall also delivered a summary of these points at our lunchtime address.

We attended a really great seminar to talk through problems retailers and manufacturers face, and how we can address them together. Our main focus is selling games through Friendly Local Games Stores, so this was right up our street!

We also had a bunch of meetings with important folks that we can’t really talk about yet, but the future is looking very exciting. And we played the prototype of a very cool new Doctor Who game we’re working on with a big name designer. Just another thing to stay tuned for in what is shaping up to be a thrilling 2015!